Tallfellow
(Under Construction) Tallfellow (Mambehoblind in Tallfellow, lit. "lip of the people") is a language spoken by the tallfellow halflings of southern Azalia in the Mortal Realm (called Dombellus in the Azalian tongue, or Dombelos in Tallfellow). A language with a rich history spanning much of the Patchwork, Eldric, and Azalian regions, Tallfellow is the dominant halfling language spoken south of West and East Bellakor, and one of the de facto lingua francas of the entire Patchwork region (rivaled only by Azalian, the dominant human tongue). Though not the most commonly spoken tongue on Dombellus, Tallfellow is the most fleshed out tongue from that world. (This is probably related to the fact that it has the most speakers in the real world, i.e. me and one of my esnarombind.) When designing Tallfellow, I wanted it to sound comfortable and familiar to English speakers, since the role of hobbits in Tolkien's fiction was to serve as a sort of everyman that the reader was meant to identify with, and I wanted to capture that feeling in my own halfling language while making it quite different from English in many of its details. For that reason, Tallfellow has no sounds that don't exist in English (unless you count the prenasalized consonants, but in modern Tallfellow these can't begin a syllable, making the pronunciation trivial). It differs from English mainly by omission of its complexities, as well as by the inclusion of several simple and fairly regular grammatical cases. This had the added benefit of making it quite easy for English speakers to learn. Classification and Dialects Phonology Consonants Vowels The phoneme oʊ is sometimes realized more like əʊ, especially in stressed syllables. The high back rounded vowel u does not appear in the Babandelglib dialect of Tallfellow; however, it was historically a feature of the language and some other dialects feature it as an allophone of oʊ. Phonotactics Writing System (Roman) In practice, accent marks are usually not written unless necessary to distinguish words. This occurs most frequently with the ablative and allative, as they differ only by stress for most words (gelwenó "to the forest", gelwéno "from the forest"). Grammar Nouns Verbs Syntax Lexicon Example text Sisos Bábelil (Tower of Babel) 1. Ingumumb dombelos engombon rum brawo mamb liba ir ewarni namban. 2. Ir, ri ehobind rum lendi lewáro, els rum bro mafro gengirumb Sránarlil ir rum wirunge holumumb. 3. Ir, els taro rum ma ehenguló, "Ar ho dopa erugrel ir wiglors eng engombe." Ir, els rum brawo erugrel imo sarm ir engegwo imo orngeng. 4. Els rum ma bwerahar, "Ar ho dopa glib ir sisos nu harumb umbur ba gul imo erimbor ir, ar ho dopa warel imo erimbor mo ar wan mon wilmunge ferb dombelosil holtro. 5. Ir, Daganemb rum hengi balo imo bomba glib ir sisos, nu elarus ewumblund rum dopa. 6. Ir, Daganemb rum ma, "Ho bomba, els umbur hobitar liba ir, els taro brawo mamb liba ir, els rum woma gum selohar im nar holerumb. Ir, wonul nu els soblu im nar wan umbur wolehar sle gum. 7. Ar ho fangi goró ir bilpom mamb sle holerumb, imo els taro wan bomba ewarni ehenglul wur." 8. Gweró Daganemb rum wilmunge els holúmo fero dombelosil holtro ir, els rum rel im dopa glib. 9. Gwéro warel gul rum mombiln Babeló, alpar holumumb, Daganemb rum bilpom mamb dombelosil tarolil. Ir, holúmo, Daganemb rum wilmunge els fero dombelosil holtro. (Recording of this text)